


blinded

by en passant (corinthian)



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-04
Updated: 2015-04-04
Packaged: 2018-03-21 06:52:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3682200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corinthian/pseuds/en%20passant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Family is complicated, so is conquering. Just a collection of moments, a strand of ideas that help situate Akaba Reiji.</p><p>Not quite canon-compliant, but somewhere in the ballpark of <i>what if</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	blinded

(By the time Reiji was ten, he already understood the world).

* * *

Akaba Leo was a man of few words and great gestures. An esteemed professor he was thought of well by the community, and of course, his wife. Himika herself was a woman to be reckoned with, even before their union there were few who would even think of crossing her and after their marriage there was no one else better to embody the idea of _power couple_.

He had been quoted saying, just once with no real attributive date, _with knowledge comes understanding and with that power follows._ Himika, too, had a similar quote signed to her name and echoed in every article that was ever printed about them: An unstoppable force can only be made through unification.

Less public, but far more memorable for their son, was Akaba Leo’s hand grasping onto the stick that Reiji had leveled at him.

“If you come at me, you’ll need more than one sword.” As if it had been a real duel, but no real sword would have been stopped with one hand, snapped in half, tossed aside. “And with intent to destroy me entirely.”

It was in fact, not the memory precisely that Reiji would recall two, five, eight years later. Instead he would remember his father breaking the single stick over his knee, a mention of how a single piece of wood could be broken easily but a bundle tied together were far stronger — unless the string was unraveled and they fell apart.

And, of course, Reiji would remember the way his father looked past him, as if he wasn’t there at all.

* * *

(Childhood memories are often recalled symbolically, instead of factually).

* * *

Sakaki Yuushou was the best entertainer the world had ever seen. Even Himika mentioned — offhand, in the same breath as deriding him — that there was a certain power to the way Yuushou could connect an audience. A true performance was a kind of uniting force too. And, it was around Yuushou’s smiles plastered in the papers and on the television that Reiji saw both his parents’ gazes turn away from each other and towards the entertainer.

It wasn’t easy to imitate Sakaki Yuushou, Reiji wasn’t comfortable with the same loud colors and hyperbolic grandeur. Rhinestones were eye-catching but were too easily scratched to be worth his time. But in the moments between moments — that was where Reiji found something to take from Yuushou.

“Ladies and gentlemen! Please pay close attention to Mister Ishijima!” Yuushou’s arm swept back, his silhouette twisted to look perfectly contrite, perfectly welcoming and with the slight tip of his head the performer’s smile looked, for a second, earnest.

At home, in front of the television with the sound turned off — he didn’t need it, not when Yuushou communicated himself so well through gesture and not when Reiji had memorized the rise and fall of his voice already — made his own smaller, more contained, version of the grand bow.

The potential was there, a new doorway was opened.

* * *

She had not dealt well with his father’s departure. Reiji’s mother had been the one to run the business in the first place, of course. Leo was interested in research, in theory, in pursuit of intelligence and a higher plane of being — the ultimate world. Himika was practical.

But Leo had left his mark on everything. The company, the flagship school under his name, the chip he left in the unified front known as _together_. Himika was only human.

So, Reiji did what any good son did — he ascended.

* * *

“You didn’t see her, did you?” Reiji asked Layra. He knew the answer already, of course. Layra hadn’t been there when he stumbled through the portal, not there to see Leo and not there to see Serena. Layra had been at home, sitting at their mother’s side, wide eyed and waiting.

“No,” Layra answered. “I didn’t see her, brother.”

“She also represents a possibility for our future.” Not in the same way as the other things Reiji had in motion, of course. He was gathering lances — they had a longer reach than sticks and swords and were sure to pierce the heart of his treacherous father. But he had also seen something else in Serena, the girl who had claimed to want to win his father’s favor.

It was ridiculous, wasn’t it.

But he’d seen the answer for himself in the way Leo treated Serena. She was a piece of potential to Leo too and Reiji would be damned if he let that slip through his fingers as well. The burned bits of metal and plastic hadn’t even scorched his skin, but the best scientists had already confirmed that it was beyond repair.

“Did you see me return, Layra?”

“I did, brother.”

Layra’s eyes slipped shut. Layra swallowed and then didn’t continue. Reiji waited. He had learned that too, a performer got the best return when the timing was right and Layra did poorly when pushed — a lesson Himika had never quite absorbed.

“I’m ready.”

Reiji handed the pieces of broken bracelet to Layra. “Then take a look at this.”

* * *

(It was then, or maybe a bit before, that he had first realized how wrong his parents both were).

* * *

“You’re telling me that your father doesn’t care if his son gets taken?” Kurosaki Shun, from the XYZ Dimension, sneered. It really astounded Reiji, in a certain fashion, that such a thought could even exist.

“Who do you think we’re going to war against?” Reiji swept his arm back, let his fingers curl up and indicate the Leo Corp personnel behind him. Shun wasn’t a fool and it was likely he was a soldier of some kind, resistance, perhaps. Reiji could guess that much about him and it was confirmed by the way Shun’s eyes swept across Reiji’s people, then around for exits and impromptu weapons.

Shun scowled, his stance hadn’t relaxed at all.

“Well, that doesn’t really matter. I have no objections to being your opponent or being your ineffective bargaining chip.” 

“What do you mean?”

“Shall we make a contract — an agreement of sorts. If you fulfill the conditions I set before you, I’ll let you do as you wish.”

Reiji didn’t have to watch Shun to know that he’d won, the offer was too good to refuse, of course.

* * *

Only once, had Reiji asked his mother to not call him _Reiji-san_. It had been before his parents had started looking down opposite paths. Before his father had provoked him into lashing out, before Reiji had ever thought of striking his own father.

Himika had gathered Reiji to her chest in a way that Reiji had thought — shouldn’t it be Layra, held like this? — but he couldn’t remember where Layra had been. Perhaps in the nursery, perhaps alone in the king sized bed his parents shared, perhaps nowhere at all.

“Your father inherited this city,” Himika explained, affection and adoring and predatory all at once, “But it will be your birthright. Reiji-san, this throne will be yours.”

“Mom, isn’t just ‘Reiji’, fine?”

Her nails pushed through the fabric of his sweater, grounded him in the moment.

“Someday even I will bow down to a new king, so the man you become will have to be worth it, Reiji-san.”

* * *

(I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well).

* * *

“You’ve never been on a battlefield have you?” Shun raged, but in the oddly composed way that Reiji had gotten used to. His shoulders pulled in tightly and his expression pinched, husky voice cracking with anger. “Never run for your life or lost something more important than — “

“Your silence would be appreciated, in this moment.” Reiji interrupted, never letting his eyes stray from the cameras that cast out over Maiami. It had taken too long to hunt down the XYZ users, and the Fusion summoner had also slipped through their fingers. It couldn’t be helped, the teleportion technology was too much for even Layra’s clever eye to fully pick apart.

“I will not follow your orders, our _agreement_ has nothing of that in it.”

“Is our cooperation not for your ultimate goal? If you wish to carelessly endanger our chances of success then you can make your choice.” The monitors flickered, showing nothing but calm streets and happy citizens. Reiji felt his own disinterest weigh heavily on him. For far too long he had been uninterested in engaging with the mundane. There were reasons of course, choosing to guard the city like he did limited him, he was busy, as well, and. . .

“You would rather wait and do nothing, under the guise of planning.” Occasionally, Shun would try to attack, to push back at Reiji. The previous barbs had never been effective — he said nothing Reiji did not agree with. Though, it was only Shun who found arguing over the idea of being hunted and fighting for survival to be of importance. Reiji had greater things on his mind.

. . . and, in all his years of being alive, Reiji had found without challenge life was somewhat worthless. A king was meant to rule, a conqueror to expand lands, and he hadn’t been a prince for far too long to be satisfied with idleness.

Instead of letting the mild insult pass, he upped the ante.

“Kurosaki.” Reiji turned from the screens and fixed him with an even, serious, stare: “Haven’t we had this conversation before?”

* * *

(Shun had been there, when they remade Masumi, Hokuto and Yaiba’s memory, of course).

* * *


End file.
